This invention relates to an apparatus for feeding products from a row of products which is being advanced along a path. More particularly, the apparatus meters, stacks, and/or upends groups of incoming products and delivers the groups to downstream equipment.
The invention finds particular utility in connection with packaging machinery. For example, Paper Converting Machine Company of Green Bay, Wis. offers a family of FC machines for packing bundles of products such as rolls of toilet paper and rolls of paper towels. Rolls to be bundled and packaged are advanced toward the machine along one or more lanes. The rolls may be upended, i.e., moved from a cores-down position to a cores-up position, stacked into multiple levels, collated into bundles containing the desired number of rolls, and loaded into a packager which seals each bundle within a plastic wrap.
In certain prior art upending methods, elevated slats on an infeed conveyor are used in conjunction with spring-loaded upper flights to upend the incoming rolls. The rolls are deposited onto the infeed conveyor just ahead of, or behind, the elevated slat. The upper flight bar, traveling at a differential velocity, then contacts the front, or back, surface of the product and "rolls" it into an upright position atop the elevated slat. The slat is then lowered to the level of the infeed conveyor surface as the upper flight travels up and away from the product. The disadvantage to this technique when upending very soft rolls of tissue is that the bottom edge of the roll may become deformed as the product is "rolled" up. The deformed end presents an unstable platform for the upended product, and it therefore tends to fall over.
Certain prior art stacking methods loaded rolls of tissue into an elevating cassette of shelves in either cores-up or cores-down orientation. When one shelf was loaded completely, the elevator would index to the height of the next shelf and the process would repeat. To insure a smooth loading operation, the vertical distance between the shelves of the cassette had to be somewhat greater than the size of the incoming product, and a vertical gap would therefore exist between the layers of product in the cassette. Upon completion of the loading process, with the cassette in the uppermost position, the collator paddle would travel forward, thus clearing the collated bundle from the stacker cassette. During this process the aforementioned vertical gap would allow the upper products to fall down upon the product from the lower shelve(s). As a result, the product would occasionally bounce, thus un-collating the bundle.